The Crow, The Princess, and The Serpent
by valbino
Summary: "Mythic" AU. In the house by the river, a nightmare resides. The guardian's presence signals a change in the tide. In the room in the back, she is accused by the bride. The snake himself takes his time to bide. Incomplete. (cover art by yours truly)
1. Chapter 1

Sasuke had returned.

His return to the village—long after the great Empire's war had ended—was punctuated by the fulfillment of a five year old promise and the contempt of the elders.

Why did he not come back to his waiting bride, Sakura, at the first sign of truce? Did the emperor need a new recruit from a farming village for elite tasks? If so, why?

His two year delay in coming home was troubling indeed.

On another level, the rush to finalize the marriage of himself and Sakura began as soon as he was sighted on the horizon, and ended as their hands were clasped together by the leader of the elders. They wore their most formal kimono: he in black, she in red, both wearing familial emblems. A wreath of cherry blossoms joined their necks.

They left the ceremony to Sasuke's waiting, empty hovel at the bridge. One bedroom, one front room, one bath, one kitchen, one attic. A waste pot was next to the bath. It was furnished minimalistically: no excess. Everything was as he had left it. It was strangely clean despite going unused for several years.

Sakura cautiously walked on ahead. She had never entered his house before, past the front room. She felt his hand snatch her wrist, and she whipped herself around to face him. His gaze was down, the corners of his mouth strained.

"Not yet. I have a gift." Seeing her hesitation, he looked into her green eyes with his black ones. His irises glittered like black opals. "Please."

_Should I have done this?_ she thought, suddenly, but pushed it aside. Their marriage would make her family's status soar. That was all that mattered. Perhaps a silly childhood crush would grow into a mature, adult love. _But_ _five years._

Sasuke's smell was now mixed with kunai oil and the smell of foreign spices, none of which she recognized. He looked older than his twenty-one years. Far older. His eyes were like crushed jet and his hair was the color of charcoal.

He reached into the folds of his robe and drew forth a little lacquered box. "Sakura..." He knelt, opened it. He held up an ornate rose gold ring dotted with garnets and pearls. "This ring was my mother's. Please."

It fit around her thumb. Before she could admire it more closely, Sasuke pressed the box into her hands and closed her fingers around it. She swallowed, suddenly thirsty.

"Thank you...Sasuke."

"I want tonight's experiences to go beyond the barriers of my humble home," he said. The proposition sounded rehearsed and formal. "Perhaps something like the gods will come down upon us."

"Indeed." It was nearing supper time, and soon after they would consummate. As tradition. However... "I will require some time to prepare."

He nodded. Stood up. His thumb dragged across her knuckles, rough with callus. "Of course. Take as much as you need. In an hour, the hired help will bring in your belongings."

That gave her pause. "Hired help?"

Sasuke nodded. "A noblewoman, broke. Begging for work on the outskirts. I offered to hire her as housekeeper. What clan she's from, she won't say. I pay her well."

It wasn't exactly uncommon for the emperor to disband noble houses that got too power-hungry. Supposedly, that was what happened to the Uchiha clan a hundred years ago. At least, before Sasuke's family was found murdered in their beds, weapons pinning them down through their chests.

(And his older brother had gone missing as well. Rumor was that he had killed them and ran instead of facing the consequences.)

So Sakura was led to the bath and the curtain was drawn around her. Weak winter sunlight filtered in. The steam made her feel like she was in a cloud.

She scrubbed at her toes and fingers with a pumice-stone to soften them, removed as much body hair as she could reach. And then she treated her hair with the fragrant oils she found there, lacing it with ginger from her pouches of herbs. When she finished bathing, a white silk yukata was waiting for her in the hands of

"You must be the hired help."

The "noblewoman" couldn't have been much older than Sakura herself. Barely an adult. Though her dark blue-black hair was tied back in a simple ponytail, it still carried the sheen of nobility. Her skin was free of blemish. Her eyes were strange, the color of milk, and shiny like pearls.

"Um, yes." Her demeanor, however, was meeker than the lowest peasant. She looked at the floor and mumbled. "Uchiha-san said to give this to you, ma'am."

"I see." Sakura took the robe and shrugged it on, tying a complicated knot in the belt. "Do you have a Name?"

"H-Hinata, ma'am. Just Hinata."

At least she was polite.

000

He was waiting for her, unclothed except for a loincloth, in the bedroom. He looked out the window, down at the river. His body was free of scarring and injury save for a tattoo on his neck, and an angry red scar on his torso. She wanted to run her fingertips over it, and press healing herbs upon it.

"Your chest..."

He snatched her hand mid-motion. A crow's cry could be heard despite the walls.

"I understand your concern, but I want to remember this scar," he said. The words were still formal and alien on his tongue. "And the battle that gifted it to me."

His eyes regained a familiar look, one she hadn't seen since they were much younger. He looked over her body in the robe, and slid his fingers around her waist. The knot came undone, the robe parted. Her cheeks warmed at the bulge in his crotch.

"Shall we?"

She gazed into his eyes. "Yes."

She doubted no longer.

000

**AN: **I've been fiddling around with this idea for a long time. It's based on a dream I had that had a lot of mythic qualities and stuff with Itachi and Hinata. I have to dig my notes out from another notebook apparently, but I figured I'd finish this chapter and post it for you guys! -Val


	2. Chapter 2

They had only made love once, a week ago. When the marriage was consummated. There was something unpleasant about the sensation, despite the body's climax. Sasuke felt strange and foreign, a newcomer to his own body. At first, he hoped the feeling would pass as he got used to friendly contact again.

Instead, it grew worse.

The hot buzzing against his ear drums matching the tempo of his breath, the way the tattoo on his neck seemed to writhe. Sakura's voice was white noise most of the time. Her little touches were cuts on numb skin. Sometimes the buzzing filled his vision as well, with blooms of color and branches of white cutting across. His joints were on fire.

Meditation helped. He sat on the bedroom floor with his eyes shut.

(A flash of memory: "You will feel some discomfort as your body adjusts, but the payoff will be enormous.")

The gentle clack of ceramics was hammering at his ear drums. "I brought you some tea," someone said. Their footsteps were hammers. He could hear the movement of hair and fabric like stones rubbing against each other.

"Thank you." Even his own voice was warped and metallic.

The front door opened and closed with deep thunder, the latch a clang. Everything _hurt._ He would have been unable to move regardless, but the simple act of opening his eyes and reaching for the cup of tea caused ripples of pins and needles over the left side of his body. He sat there with his hand touching the rim of the cup. He didn't know for how long.

(If this was mere discomfort, he thought, the other recipients of the tattoo must be dead by now.)

A purple-blue splotch bloomed across the upper half of the doorway, accompanied by the feeling that his ears were about to burst. Someone was now standing directly over him, two orange spots where the eyes were supposed to be.

Like a night terror, the sensation vanished. He was left with spilled tea and his friend, Naruto, standing over him with a grin.

"Did I scare ya?"

"...No." The tattoo seemed a bit sore, but he could not otherwise recall why he had been so uncomfortable. "Why are you here? I thought you were at the wedding."

"Nope! Just got back from my own-" He leaned down and whispered. "-Special training."

"Ah. Forgive my manners." Sasuke stood back up in a single motion. His legs were stiff and creaky.

"No big deal. You okay?"

"Of course. I think I could use some fresh air. Walk?"

Naruto's laugh was a welcome sound. "Let's get some ramen, too. On me."

"But...these oils can help you," Sakura said again. "Y-you're hurt."

Her gold bracelets clinked as she began mixing...something. He smelled the pungency of mustard and pepper.

Sasuke couldn't remember if she had been interested in the healing arts before he left. He couldn't remember much at all beyond the war. And then there was a gap, and then he was in the village again, and then he was married.

He watched her work.

A few minutes ago, before beginning, she had chanted something and painted a purple diamond on her forehead. Then she had laid out her herbs, oils, bowls, and tools out over a black cloth.

At the moment, she was grinding peppercorns with a mortar and pestle. Her wrist twisted like a mechanism. In a silver bowl next to the mortar, there was a dark yellow oil. Rather than add the peppercorn grounds to the bowl, she dripped oil into the mortar, two or three drops at a time.

A momentary pause, to drip the oil from the bowl back into the glass bottle, wipe it with a white scrap of cloth, and then pour a different oil. It was sweet-smelling and pale.

Without even looking, she dashed a handful of taupe powder into the mix. It apparently became too thick to work with, because she emptied the rest of the oil into the mortar.

She packaged it into a shallow ceramic bowl with a lid. It was then settled into a black cloth bag.

She finally glanced up. Her eyes were so...green. Like palm leaves from the coast. "You watched the whole thing?"

He nodded. He gestured at the oils and herbs. "What was that?"

For a moment, she seemed confused, though that quickly gave way to pleasure. "Ah, an elder wanted something to rub into his joints. Mustard oil and peppercorns for circulation and pain relief, rosehip seed oil to soothe the skin, and some clay to thicken it for application and draw out impurities."

He wasn't sure what to say to that. "Interesting."

"Half of it is the materials, half of it is intent," she went on. "For many, the materials' quality can almost make up for a lack of intent, but the product is still not as good."

"Intent?"

"A skilled herbalist only needs to think about the product's intended purpose, as it is finished being mixed. Some need incantations. Some need to say 'this salve is meant to soothe achey joints.'"

"So this is sorcery?"

"You can't really heal or kill with pure intent that I know of." She wrote something down, then began preparing something else. "But there is a kind of magic to it, yes."

"Interesting," he finally said, but he wasn't sure if he meant it.

000

AN: Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed it!


	3. Chapter 3

It hadn't taken Hinata long to settle in. The daily rhythm of the household was relatively unchanging, despite Sasuke's...oddities (which had worsened since they met on the road a few weeks ago). For now, she was getting ready to retire for the evening.

The only clan identifier she hadn't sold or pitched during her travels was an elaborately carved tortoiseshell comb, the shape of a crane, inlaid with mother-of-pearl and gold, her parents had had commissioned to celebrate her birth. That, she kept hidden in a little leather case tucked into a secret pocket on the inside of her slip.

She still felt guilty about the fear she had heard in Neji's voice-as she was making her way past the camp's perimeter-when he shouted for her. But if she were to be a good ruler, then she needed to leave. She needed to intimately understand the people of the empire, and the best way to gain such knowledge was through direct means. She knew enough of cooking, cleaning, and fighting to blend in. There were enough scattered noblemen that nobody would question why she was selling off such luxuries or her obvious pedigree.

Besides, nobody had seen a member of the emperor's family for a century.

At least, that was what most people believed. That House Hyuga was a small, but powerful family guarded by an entourage from another clan. Of course, they were all Hyuga. All 100 of them. And many of the servants as well. If one counted all the illegitimate half-bloods and ancillae, they could populate a city.

And they did, though only the royal family lived in the Fire Palace. The rest remained in the City of the Forest. But there was a problem.

The royal family never left the palace unless it was for the annual pilgrimage. The golden statue of Amaterasu was more important than caring about the state of the empire. They no longer knew the common people, and even from within the carriages and curtained litters, she saw them suffering and poor.

There was a knock at her room's door, harsh and insistent. She barely cracked it open before Sakura shoved it the rest of the way. She seemed concerned. No. Worried.

"Hello?" she whispered.

"Where's Sasuke?!"

"I, um, don't think so. He and Naruto-san? They went out for lunch…" Hinata felt something drain from her face, pooling in her stomach. "...And...they haven't been back."

Sakura's voice cracked. "Do you know where they went?!"

"Maybe...they went to the noodle shop? W-why?"

But Sakura was gone.

Hinata shut the door once more. It had become night hours ago. She yawned, stretched, and went about the process of changing into her sleepwear. She tied her hair into a bun, then walked to the washing basin to rinse her face.

Then she did her nightly tour of the house, putting away anything left amiss with the exception of Sakura's pieces of equipment. These, she wiped down and placed into their initial spaces. Last, she blew out most of the lanterns, leaving one lit in each room, and took a candle to her own. She peeked out the front door for a sign that Sakura and Sasuke were returning. She found only dark silence. So she went back to her room.

There was a tapping at her window. A branch, she thought.

When she held her candle up to the panes, she saw a little crow on the sill. It pecked at the window with its beak in a rather unbirdlike manner. The thought struck her that it was knocking. Crows were intelligent, of course, but do they learn human behaviors like this? She felt uneasy.

It stopped tapping at the windowpane and fluffed its wings. It looked up at her, finally, and held her gaze. Its eyes were a glowing red, with little pinpricks for pupils. It opened and closed its beak a few times. Whatever sound came out, it did not reach Hinata's ears. She nearly dropped her candle. What was that thing if not a crow? The augurs at the temple had not spoken of crows except that they were ominous and not to be trusted. They were keen creatures.

She felt she was being studied: her seal broken and she herself unfurled like a scroll. She felt compelled to continue looking. This crow seemed to understand who she was, somehow. It released a loud, sharp caw and flew away.

Her candle was almost a pool of wax in the candlestick. How long had she been there? There was a puddle on the floor as well, with a few splashes hardening on her toes. She was sleepy, as if the hours lost standing at the window were coming on all at once. But she had to clean it up. But her bed was so inviting.

She pinched her forearm to try to wake up, at least enough to scrape the drippings. Her vision doubled. The last thought she had was the crow must have cast a sleeping spell on her, but that was impossible, because crows do not perform magic.

000

"You haven't been overworking her?"

That was Sasuke's voice. He seemed upset.

"No! She was fine when I left...to look for _you_!" Sakura was...loud.

Hinata cracked her eyes open and tried to move through her splitting headache. Sakura noticed, and pushed at her shoulder. A warning. "Stay right there."

She watched as two pairs of feet left, and heard two muffled voiced continue the argument. A while later, Sakura returned, some sort of sparkling talisman or pendant in tow. She touched Hinata's shoulder again, more gently.

"Do you know what happened?" she asked.

Hinata looked at the candlewax on the floor, then looked back at Sakura. There was a blank space in her mind. "I-I don't know….I'm sorry…maybe I was sleepwalking…"

"Hmm." Sakura held her talisman up, which was an intricate arrangement of purple beads and multicolored precious stones with a large polished emerald as the centerpiece. "Look at the emerald and breathe this in."

A sprig of rosemary was shoved under her nose. The emerald began to glow and pulse at the first inhalation. Something felt like it was being pulled from the center of her forehead, like candy or noodles.

"That's strange," Sakura murmured.

"What?"

"There should be an image in the emerald, even if it was just a dream." She frowned.

"W-what does that mean?"

"Someone cast a very, very powerful spell." She paused, considering. "I saw the shreds of energy being drawn out. That was the glow. The rosemary helps with memory, and the emerald is for insight. It also siphons the magic coming to the surface."

"Is…there a-anything I can do?"

"Let's get you into bed. I won't be seeing any patrons today."

Sakura left and returned with Sasuke again. Wordlessly, they lifted Hinata and laid her on top of the blankets. Her head hurt so much she couldn't move properly, so perhaps that was for the best. Sasuke frowned and whispered something to Sakura, then briskly walked away.

Sakura raised an eyebrow, then turned back to Hinata. There was a fierce determination in her eyes. "I'm going to get to the bottom of this."


	4. Chapter 4

AN: Sorry for the wait! I have a lot of WIPs going at once

Enjoy! 

-Val

000

The spy had been tracking the princess for approximately a month, at the behest of her father. Her intentions were difficult to ascertain, though she seemed to have no ulterior motive. There was no lover in the picture, male or female, and therefore no pregnancy. The coins she had gotten from selling her belongings often found themselves in temple donation boxes.

She had run into a soldier on the road around a week after escaping the royal family's campsite. He was of the old Uchiha clan.

The princess had quickly asserted that she was from one of the disbanded houses, avoiding a name, when questioned. Exiled as punishment, looking for work as a cook or cleaner. The Uchiha had been suspicious at first, reasonably so, though easily won over. There was no latent attraction that he had been able to detect, on either end. The Uchiha had even gone out of his way to avoid touching her. How odd. The princess was quite lovely, even in peasant clothes.

The village the Uchiha lived in was middling-to-large, next to a river embedded in a gully. His home looked like it wanted to fall off the edge of the rock. There was a nearby grotto, which received no visitors, save for the spy himself as of late. The area was green enough, he supposed.

He watched the pink-haired woman enter and leave several times, carrying small bags and jars. A healer. There was a blond man who entered the house, too. He and the Uchiha left a few minutes later, though the spy tried to ignore the pang of guilt at Sasuke's pale face and glassy eyes.

After he hopped down the hillside, a crow flew to him and perched itself on his shoulder. He paid it no mind. It had been his sole companion for the past fifteen years.

He entered the grotto-cave and hunkered down on the worn bamboo mat-beds he had spread on the floor. He was disinterested in sleeping among the muck and on rocks. The crow fluffed itself up, then opened its beak.

"What's the plan, Itachi?" It croaked something like a laugh. "Swoop in and take her?"

"Don't call me that," he murmured. "I don't think it would be wise to kidnap her."

Clack. Clack. "Your little brother won't like seeing you."

"He _won't_ see me."

The spy pulled a scroll from his array of bags, along with a set of brushes and a jar of ink. He wrote his report: the princess's location, his suggestion for how to proceed with her retrieval, and a few landmark details. He neglected to mention that she was staying with his brother's household or her job as, essentially, a servant. Both of these facts would be blamed on himself.

He rolled the scroll up, sealed it with wax, and handed it off to the crow.

"Make yourself useful," he said.

"Of course...Itachi." And it was gone.

Without the crow-really, a spirit calling itself 'Yatagarasu'-anchoring his abilities, he would shift into a crow himself by sundown. It seemed like it had always been like this.

His parents had made a pact with Yatagarasu, he the bargaining chip. He was the perfect little agent. But the emperor's own agents discovered him, and they turned him against his own family, already the remnants of an earlier purge. Those left alive were carted to the prison and eventually separated in exile.

Disbanded by blood indeed.

When the sky bled pink, just before sunset, he disrobed to prepare for the transformation. It was painful and messy. It would not do to be forced to wash his clothes in a place he could be discovered. He laid on the bare earth and mud, his back flush with it.

He once watched himself change as a reflection on a silver vase. The first thing would be his nails, his hands and feet. His limbs would recede and warp, his face would jut and then the last thing before he blacked out was his spine snapping into a bizarre curvature. His eyes had become a bright, unnatural red, and stayed that way ever since the first transformation.

He awoke as the stars glittered to life in a pool of clear slime. It was time to find out what he could about the specifics of the situation. Preferably, he would have her return home by her own choice, without cornering her in the town square or frightening her. Of course, it could never be so simple.

He spotted Sasuke and the blond man from before out among the fields as he flew over to the village. He was too far away to see what they were doing. Whatever it was, it was irrelevant to his assignment.

He returned to the house by the river, where the princess was. He perched on a nearby tree and observed her putting out lights one by one in brief glimpses through the windows. She cracked the door open, and then disappeared into the dark momentarily. He flew to the sill of the only window still bathed in gold light.

He was unsure what he could gain from this. He shuffled along the length of the sill a few times. She pulled off her outer jacket and draped it over her arm before folding it and placing it in a box. He turned away until the light dimmed. It was her, in a shift dress, with a single lit candle in hand.

He pecked at the window.

That was the real annoyance with the spell he was attempting to weave: it required eye contact. It would not harm her at all, and it was the gentlest of the three he could use to get the relevant information. It felt like he was going to be sucked through the glass himself when she did look, finally. Ignore anything irrelevant, he told himself.

There it was: a memory of the royal litter-the princess being carried through the streets by twelve men-decorated with lush pillows and translucent white drapery shielding her from the public eye. It was part of a grand celebratory procession through the imperial city. There was cheering, thrown flowers, and thrown rice.

He remembered that day; he had been walking on the streets parallel to the procession's route. He was disguised as an ordinary merchant, parasol in hand. His various scrying abilities were put to use in searching for potential threats to the imperial family.

He wondered what it was she saw that made such an impression. He needed to delve deeper, feel and see what she felt and saw. So he projected further.

The elaborate kimono was stiff and uncomfortable, the makeup feeling greasy on such a hot day. A gold fan in the right hand served dual purpose-to stave off the summer, and to shield view of the princess from the public.

A breezy day made for breezy curtains, so the fan was held in front of her face. She took sidelong glances through the openings such wind made. She was...sad, looking at the crowd. A lily made it into the compartment. She picked it up like it was the finest porcelain.

When she looked out again, it was because the procession stopped. An elderly nobleman's voice droned on in a speech.

In the space between two buildings there were some peasant children sitting on the ground. They were barefoot. Her father's speech ended. The litter jerked back to life. She held her gaze on them for as long as she could. This time, she paid close attention to the people on the street instead of averting her gaze.

Frayed sleeves, sharp cheekbones, deep tans and cloth-wrapped feet caught her attention for the first time. And it was unending. She could see the cracks in the celebration. It was like trying to get a clear reflection in curved glass. A slant, and it was a warped parody. She threw the flower to the floor.

He wrenched himself out of the memory. That was...enough. She would come to with no memory of what happened, he hoped. He returned to his camp.


End file.
